


sorry about the blood in your mouth

by grinandsin



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-06 23:23:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grinandsin/pseuds/grinandsin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If love can be called a mistake, then he just hopes he didn’t fuck Gallagher up too badly in the process (3.09 Coda).</p>
            </blockquote>





	sorry about the blood in your mouth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MintSauce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintSauce/gifts).



> Title is from Richard Siken's [Little Beast](http://yupnet.org/siken/2008/03/24/little-beast/).

“So, is it true? You’re getting married?”

Mickey doesn’t take the damn bait for once, just lets Gallagher have his go. 

“So who is it, is it Angie Zago or some other piece of trash you screwed so you can pretend I don’t matter to you?” 

Mickey isn’t surprised that Gallagher found him here—if he were a different man he’d say he half expected it—and of ‘course he knew that word would eventually get around about the wedding (word _always_ fucking gets around on the South Side) so he ignores him. Figures that if he does it long enough, maybe he’ll just leave like last time. 

He can drag it out if he wants. Listen as Ian pulls out more questions, could wait for him to grow impatient and frustrated enough to just fuckin’ leave and consider Mickey a lost cause in the process. Mickey expects some harsh insults about how he’s a pansy who can’t even stand up to his own father before the walkin’ away part though. And he’ll take all of it without so much as a flinch because he fucking deserves it this time (maybe deserved it every time, he knows well enough that he ain’t nobody’s damn hero). He recognizes the game; the rules don’t change just ‘cause the situations do. 

Unfortunately, he doesn’t have any luck (never really has) and when Ian throws the damn bottle at the wall, the broken glass scattering across the floor, he can’t help but exclaim, “Aye, what the _fuck_ , Gallagher?” 

“Oh, he speaks!” 

And he can hear it in Ian’s voice, can hear the shit he’s causing to stir up inside the redhead, wishes he could lie to himself a little more and say it doesn’t matter, that _Gallagher_ doesn’t matter. But he won’t—can’t. Whatever. Hell, the whole reason he’s doing this wedding shit is to make sure the kid doesn’t wind up some nobody in tomorrow’s paper, and even if he can’t just _say that_ outright, he thought Gallagher was smart enough to figure it out on his own. 

It’s not unusual for Mickey to save up all the bits of himself that are both wrong and broken so that he can bury them deep down under shit that doesn’t mean much to him, it’s how he was raised, after all. When other kids were learning how to color inside the lines of a coloring book, Mickey was learning how to duck from a stray punch to the head and pretend it didn’t fuckin’ faze him. Most of the time he believed it. 

But it seems no matter how hard he tries, he can’t bury this _thing_ (with Ian Gallagher of all fucking people) for good. There’s always gonna be a loose end—probably because he doesn’t really wanna bury it, would rather just bury Terry fifteen feet deep, if he could—and that loose end will always get twisted and pulled so much that it unravels into something else entirely. 

And since he can’t bury this thing, he walks out and hopes Gallagher will take the hint and quit while he’s ahead because Mickey’s itching for a fight, can already imagine the blood on his knuckles and the throbbing in his muscles. And the fighting is nothing new because that’s what he does, it’s who he is for Christ sake, but he doesn’t want to beat the shit out of Ian if he doesn’t have to. 

But Ian is tired, bare, a thin facade of brashness over a jumble of worry, and his gaze is open and bold when he says, “So that’s it, we’re over? Your dad beats the shit out of us and you’re just gonna get married, no conversation, nothing?” 

_You deserve this_ , Mickey thinks to himself as the words reach his ears, _you should’ve known better_.

And Mickey does deserve it so he’ll take it because he may be many things, but at the end of the day he’s still a Milkovich and he knows when he’s fucked up. Plus, it’s true, isn’t it? He’s such a damn pussy that he couldn’t ( _can’t_ , he corrects himself) even keep either of them safe. He got clumsy and a little too fuckin’ comfortable with everything and it all resulted in this. He’d never been that damn stupid before, couldn’t afford to then, still can’t afford to now. 

But then—then Ian _touches_ him and it sets him off, brings him back from his own head. 

He honestly just means to just push his hand away, and he succeeds, but then Ian’s hand is right back there on his right shoulder and he can feel a deep burning feeling that travels from where Gallagher’s hand is on him to the pit of his stomach, where it swirls with all the alcohol he’s consumed since all this shit started with the Russian. 

“Get the fuck off me,” he barks, and he shoves Ian, not enough to really do anything, just bring some distance between the two of them. Maybe scare him off, if he’s lucky. 

Except for the fact that Mickey and luck have never been associated with one another. 

"Oh, you want to fag bash? That make you feel like a man?" Ian sounds more composed than he is, determined, and the fact that Mickey can actually fucking realize that is scary enough. “C’mon, go ahead. Do it!”

So he does, because he has to hit something and Ian has to be hit (and he’ll worry about that more tonight, when he’s alone, because he knows that’s probably got something to do with him, he ruins everything he touches, after all). He hits him once in the stomach, and the force of it makes Ian bend in two, clutching his middle as he tries to look up through the pain to meet Mickey in the damn eye. 

" _Fuck_ ," Mickey breathes, and he looks up at the sky and wonders, not for the first time, how the hell they ended up here. Figures the question will haunt him long after Gallagher finally disappears from his life. 

He grabs his bottle off the ground and turns to walk away from Ian, thinking that whatever it was between them is finally comin’ to an end, but he isn’t even ten steps away before he hears Ian say, loud and unwavering from where he’s hunched over on the ground, “You love me, and you’re gay.” 

He stops, turns around, and just _stares_ at the kid for a moment, but before he decides on what the hell he’s going to do next, Ian’s telling him to admit it just this once, to just fucking admit it. 

And what exactly does he expect Mickey to admit? 

That Gallagher gets so fucking far under his skin he might as well use it as a sleeping bag? Fuck, no. He isn’t that twelve year old girl that cries into her diary at night because the world just isn’t _fair_. Of course it’s not fuckin’ fair, and the sooner they both realize shit like that, the sooner they won’t have to look behind their back after every goddamn turn for fear of Terry. 

(God, he wants to be a clock: inanimate, emotionless, irrelevant. He’d rather be anything but what he is—a damn coward.) 

But he can’t—isn’t sure he would admit it even if it were possible, because what the fuck does love get you on this side of town anyway, ‘cept for maybe a few bruises here and there—so instead he just punches Ian once in the jaw. 

And it’s hard, because Ian’s being stubborn and won’t fucking see that this is never going to work out, and it’s not for the fact of not trying, it’s just that these sort of things aren’t meant to be no matter how much effort you _think_ you can put into it. And the least Mickey could do is make Ian see that he can (and should) do better. He owes Ian that, at least, and he knows that if he pushes him this far away, is this shitty to him, then he won’t try to come back again . He owes it to him like he owes Mandy a way the fuck out of this place before she screws up bad enough that she’s stuck too. 

He looks at where Ian’s laying on the ground, and he can feel himself on the verge of crying for the first time in a long ass time, so he rubs furiously at his eyes and tries to hold it together as everything they’ve built starts to crumble apart. 

He _has_ to do this, can’t fuck up any more than he already has, because if he doesn’t, Terry damn sure will. 

“Feel better now? Feel like a man?” It’s taunting—as if Ian really hasn’t had enough and the sound makes Mickey want to vomit all the alcohol in his stomach back out because he feels the complete opposite of masculine right now and this feeling, whatever it is, is probably never going to quit eating at his insides. 

He kicks out once, ends up hitting Gallagher in the face, can even see the gush of blood fly out after his foot connects. He’s pretty sure he knocked a tooth out of place and that that is why there’s so much damn blood in his mouth. He thinks, _sorry about the blood in your mouth, wish it was mine_ , before taking another swig of his drink and tossing it off to the side of the empty lot. 

“Feel better now,” he says as he walks away, leaving Gallagher still withering in agony on the ground, and for the first time in his life, the lie twists his gut up. 

**//**

He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing at the convenience store—he needs some beer, sure, but they probably have some more at the house—other than that he can’t go home when he’s feeling like this. Can’t go there _looking_ like this, like he's a damn bitch. So he walks into the 7-11 on Main Street (because there’s no way he’s ever goin’ back to the Kash and Grab) and asks the chick with the pixie haircut at the register if they got a bathroom in the damn shithole. 

“It’s back towards the right,” she says pointing with her dark purple nails. “But it’s solely for customer use only. Sorry.” 

Her tone doesn’t make her seem all that sorry.

Rolling his eyes, he walks over to the freezer section and pulls out a bottle before walking back over to the register and placing it down with some bills. “ _Here_ , now I’m a damn customer,” he says before he heads off in the direction that she pointed before she can say anything else. 

Once in the bathroom he securely closes the door behind him and turns on the faucet. The water pressure’s shit, not much better than what they have at home on a good day, but it runs and that’s really all he needs at the moment. 

He shuts his eyes tightly for a moment, rubs the heels of his calloused hands into his eye sockets a few times, and then finally settles on splashing the cool water over his face as he stares at his own reflection in the mirror. 

The face looking back at him isn’t one he recognizes. It has the same skin pulled over the same bones and the same muscles, covered with the exact same scars. It has his face—the same eyebrows he raises when he’s interested but doesn’t wanna be obvious about it, the same lips he chews when things don’t go his way, the same throat he gulps with, the same crinkles around his eyes that only really show when he smirks at Gallagher. 

The asshole in the mirror looks like him, but he isn’t _really_ Mickey.

He doesn’t wear his past or have his pain darkening his eyes. He doesn’t have his guilt and hate weighing down his shoulders and scarring his soul. He doesn’t have the taste of someone else’s blood caught in the edges of his mouth from where he wiped his palm on the walk over here. He doesn’t have the horror of death imprinted into his features, or the weariness of it haunting his dreams. He is what he could be, he thinks, if he weren’t himself. He is what he would be if his chance at a real life hadn’t ended before it started. He is what he should be, but Mickey has blood and fear on his hands and over his clothes and embedded into his skin, so he can’t be. 

They are the same and they are not the same—simply distorted views of himself because the face looking back at him could be him if he were a better man, if the world hadn't eaten him up and spit him right back out—they are the same and they hate each other for it. 

And he punches himself, his reflection anyway, and watches as the glass shatters loudly all over the dingy tiles of the shitty bathroom. Shatters like everything he’s ever touched. 

He feels a little better now (better than he did twenty minutes ago walkin’ away from Gallagher) so he guesses he can probably head somewhere else, besides his house, for the night and pretend like he didn’t just screw up the only thing he had going for him. 

If love can be called a mistake, then he just hopes he didn’t fuck Gallagher up too badly in the process.


End file.
